


the reason dear is you

by 27noir



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 02:04:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3792475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27noir/pseuds/27noir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But all he can think of is Sirius, and how simple it had been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the reason dear is you

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily inspired by _I Found a Reason_ by The Velvet Underground. 
> 
> Thanks to Rei for the beta.

I. 

 

Dawn is cracking through the broken shutters when they apperate back into the flat, nearly sober now but just not quite. The wedding had been grand. Lily had been stunning, and James, the prat, quite unable to stop grinning madly the whole damn time. Remus is happy for them both. 

Sirius steadies him as they stumbled out of their shoes, all ceremony lost as they discard bits of their formal wear across the living room. Remus trips again, just slightly, and Sirius catches him round the middle, nearly losing his balance in turn. Remus turns into him and they stumble against the wall and into a badly aimed kiss. 

Sirius makes a noise low in this throat, pulling Remus in closer to kiss him proper. “Come to bed with me,” he says, voice rough from a night of laughter and joy and celebration. “Remus—“

Remus cuts him off with another kiss, sloppy and desperate. “Yes,” breathless already. “Yes.” 

They steer each other to the bigger bedroom. The flat has two. One became just for show about a week after they moved in. _Not even_ , Remus thinks, remembering stumbling admissions and fumbling hands and the sweet taste of Sirius’s lips the first time. 

They keep enough of Remus’s stuff in the second bedroom, still. Remus is pretty sure James knows. He is both grateful to him for not saying anything, for letting him and Sirius have this thing on their own terms, and irate, because Sirius frets about it so.

They are mostly undressed by the time they make it to the bed, peeling off their dress robes and discarding them in a trail down the hall. Sirius pulls Remus down on top of him on the bed as they wriggle out of their smalls. The bed creaks, it always does, and Remus is sure their neighbors downstairs must absolutely hate them for all the noise. But he stopped being embarrassed about it ages ago, and then stopped giving a shit altogether shortly after. Being with Sirius made him lose the last of his inhibitions, those few that had remained despite growing up with the Marauders. He doesn’t particularly care if the whole neighborhood hears him fuck Sirius in the small hours of the morning. 

They are already clutching at each other, fingers pressing into skin hard enough to bruise. Remus nips Sirius along his collar bone and Sirius emit a distinctive whine. Remus presses into him, Sirius dragging his face up to kiss him, rough and heady. Remus wants to feel Sirius tight around him, to fuck him senseless. 

Remus think this is what Sirius will ask for when he opens his mouth to speak between heavy breaths. To tell Remus to fuck him until they are both coming apart at the seems. 

Instead Sirius says, “I wanted it to be us.”

Remus sits back, not out of surprise but just to really see Sirius, who is flushed at the admission, fingertips digging into Remus’s thighs. He looks scared, like he isn’t sure he should have said it. But he says it again anyway.

“The reason everyone was there—I wanted it to be us.” 

Remus just watches him for a moment, Sirius of the noble house of Black, prankster, punk, fellow marauder. Remus watches his best friend come undone at these words. 

Then he leans down and kisses Sirius softly.

“So did I.” 

It’s more than a comfort to know that he had not been alone in that thought while they watched Lily and James exchange vows in James’ parents’ backyard. They haven’t even properly told their friends yet, but through the whole ceremony Remus’s head was filled with the idea that if Sirius had been willing he would have pulled him under the canopy and done just the same. Remus would have tied himself to Sirius then and there, had it witnessed and signed. And under all the joy he felt for James and Lily, it hurt a little, a hook caught on his ribs and tugging the remainder of the evening to remind him of reality. That they would never have ceremony like that. That aside from their close friends, no one might consider their relationship anything more than illegitimate. 

But maybe it’s enough just to know it for himself. Maybe it’s enough that they admitted it’s what they wanted.  

Sirius pulls him into a desperate kiss, and simply says, “Please.”

Neither of them last long, unraveling at each other’s touch. Remus collapses at Sirius’ side and they have just enough energy left each to align themselves together in bed, legs intertwined. 

They never got round to buying proper curtains and the sun is starting to illuminate the the room through the haze of early morning fog. They are never awake at this hour, having already crashed from being up all night or catching those last precious hours of sleep before the responsibility of adulthood wakes them. There is something special about seeing Sirius in this light, in this soft glow of morning and the after affects of a night of celebration. Sirius who is always alert and eager and at the extremities of emotion seems lax and content and so perfectly settled. 

He is happy, Remus realizes. Sirius is happy in their creaking bed, and in their shitty run down flat in the loud and hazy city, where they are either too cold or to hot and sometimes half starved or behind on rent. And with the war crumbling the edges of their lives already, the wedding a rare flare of joy in the gathering despair, Sirius is happy. 

There is a perfect smile on Sirius’ face as he reaches over and lazily traces his finger tips over the contours of Remus’s cheek, brushing the scars and abrasions left from the long fights with the moon. “Moony,” Sirius says, and Remus understands that he is happy too.  

 

 

 

II. 

 

Remus doesn’t even try to go to the funeral. Wouldn’t have made it through the service, anyway. 

Instead, as soon as he is able to keep himself upright, he is on a train out of town, stuffing himself tightly into the seat. His sparse belongings, the few things he managed to find and pack without having yet another panic attack, are in a bag under his seat. 

He doesn’t know where he is going. He doesn’t really care. As long as it isn’t _here._ As long as it is not the flat, or the city, or the space that they used to share.

No one sits beside him the whole trip. 

Remus suspects they see the shadow of death on him. 

 

He runs into an old classmate in Amsterdam. No he knew really well, a Hufflepuff girl named Cassie who hung out with Lily often. But she is the perfect combination of sympathy and cynicism that Remus has drink after drink with her and something else as well, handed to him by one of her companions and taken without thought, until everything is just a hum. 

They talk about school and the war. They don’t bother to dancing around it. For all that Remus has tried to run from the topic, leaving everyone and everything he knew so he wouldn’t have to talk about it, it is good to break down now and tell someone. 

“I should have known,” he says. The words claw out of his throat and he chokes on them. “I should have fucking known. We were living in the same flat. We were fucking—“ 

He can’t breathe for a moment, in part because this is the first time he’s admitted that outside of James, Lily and Peter, though he doesn’t think Cassie catches the intent. But mostly because he hasn’t allowed himself to think about it since their deaths. Hasn’t allowed himself to think about how he spent nearly two years sleeping beside a traitor. How he is—was, was, _was—_ in love with the man who murdered his only friends. 

Sirius laughed as he blew Peter to pieces. It’s small piece of information Remus gleaned in the haze before he left. He thinks of Sirius laughing softly as Remus ran his fingers through Sirius’s long wild hair, scratching at his head as they lay together late in the day.They’d done nothing that day but laze about the house and kiss and feel each other up at every opportunity, but Sirius had just grinned at him like it had been the best day of his life. 

Remus had marveled at the idea that maybe he might make Sirius this happy. 

Someone is telling him to breathe, putting a glass in front of him and telling to drink something. There are soft hands on his back, gently circling. It takes a while, but the world stops feeling like it’s going to crush him to a fine powder. He’s still shaky and his heart still sits in his throat but he can breathe again. 

Cassie holds him, tucks around him and says soft things to him while he tries to figure out how to function again. She doesn’t let him say sorry. She kisses him softly instead, and he’s inclined to let her, to kiss her back, to run his hand across the bare patch of skin at the small of her back. 

But she presses closer, and it all goes wrong and the thought of her is so disorientating he pulls away and gasps. Tries to pull air back into his lungs. Tries not to drown. 

He stumbles to the bathroom where he throws up in the sink. He wants to want her, wants to want _anyone._ He desperately wishes he were back at Hogwarts, back when a well aimed glance from a classmate would have him flustered and ashamed.He wishes love and lust to be complicated and confusing and infuriating again, in the ignorance of adolescence. 

But all he can think of is Sirius, and how simple it had been. All Remus can think of is the light touch of Sirius’ fingers to his fevered skin, or the brightness that grew in Sirius’ eyes when he looked at Remus. With Sirius all the questions of want and need and love and desire were answered simply. 

All Remus can think of is Sirius and it makes him retch because he doesn’t know how to stop loving him. 

 

 

III. 

 

Padfoot is there, snuffling at his door, matted and soggy and scrawnier than Remus remembers. This is the first time he has seen Sirius since his disastrous last night at Hogwarts, and Remus still doesn’t know if he’s processed everything fully. Remus lets him in but doesn’t know what to say, just sighs and sinks to the floor. It’s nearly the full and he’s so tired. He doesn’t have the energy to come up with an emotional response to Sirius’s appearance just then. 

Padfoot saves him the task, and just presses himself to the floor, unchanged. He slowly creeps forward, until Remus raises a hand and then he slinks his head under and rests it in Remus’s lap while Remus scratches his ears. 

They sit like that for a long time. 

When Remus gets up to go the bed, Padfoot sits dutifully at the door to the bedroom. 

“Come on, then,” Remus says, patting the bed, and the shaggy mutt pads over and hops up on the bed. It takes him a minute, but he settles and Remus is glad for the extra warmth. 

“Never going to get the smell of wet dog out though am I,” he says. He sighs and goes to sleep.

Padfoot is still there in the morning, watching him with large grey eyes. Remus watches him sleepily back for a while. 

Then he says Sirius’ name softly. 

Sirius changes finally, and his hair is matted and his clothes are a bit soggy still and he’s far scrawnier than Remus remembers. But he is here again. 

Remus cries, not for all the things they have lost like he has done so often in the past. He cries because he is happy, despite it all, because this is just what he wished for for years. And he is willing to take all the years of brokenness if he can have this back, in whatever form they can manage it. 

 

IV. 

 

Dumbledore keeps him just busy enough that he feels useful, but not so much that he is constantly exhausted, and he spends most of the time between jobs at Grimauld Place.

Remus suspects this too was part of Dumbledore’s plan. He doesn’t blame Sirius for being irritable and restless to the extreme, but he can see why nearly everyone else makes their stays limited engagements. Apparently they are even shorter when Remus is not around to coax some good will out of Sirius. 

Which is a hard thing to do, sometimes. And there are time where Remus doesn’t even try to cover up for Sirius’ bad mood and ill temper. He is not Sirius’s keeper. It is not his job to always be cleaning up after him. 

Except at times it feel like it is. And in one if his fouler moods, Sirius tells him he doesn’t need to be kept on a leash. Remus knows he’s not talking about Dumbledore restrictions of his comings and goings. He’s talking about Remus. 

He asks Dumbledore for a longer assignment this time and is gone for nearly two weeks.

When he returns, he is exhausted and sore and nearly barreled over by Snape in the front hall. 

“You ought to put muzzle on him,” Snape snarls. “Though maybe that’d just be too exciting for you two.” 

“Oh, fuck off,” Remus says. Except he says it too loud and too close to the portrait of Sirius’ mother, and it sets her off. 

“Merlin’s balls, Snape!” Sirius hollers from the kitchen. “Can’t you even managed to leave without showing my mum your fuck ugly face?”

He comes storming down the hall to shut her up and skids to a halt when he sees Snape and Remus glowering at each other. Sirius give Remus a sort of startled look that softens into something unreadable.

“Oh do try to keep it in your pants,” Snape says before he steps out the door and apperates off the front step. 

Sirius’ mother manages to let out a “I will not abide queer filth under—“ before Sirius flicks his wand to silence her. 

The quiet that follows is deafening. 

“There’s coffee,” Sirius says, and it almost sounds like an apology. 

Remus desperately wants a shower and to fall into bed, but he follows Sirius to the kitchen and takes the cup of that’s handed to him. It’s extra sweet like he always takes it. He thanks Sirius and gives him a tired smile. 

Sirius sits across from him on at the table. 

“Moony, look,” he starts, and then stops. Sirius runs a hand through his unkempt hair, longer now than ever because he won’t even let Remus at it to cut it. He ruffles it aggressively and then looks up at Remus through the hair in his eyes. 

“Why me, Remus?” Sirius asks. “Why do you keep putting up with me? Why keep trying to make up for my piss poor behavior? I’m not angry that you’re doing it. I’m angry at myself for my own actions. I yell at everyone who are not the kids. Half the time I’d rather just stash myself away upstairs with Buckbeak than talk to anyone, including you. I’m miserable and vicious and beyond useless, Moony. And yet you still seem happy to see me.”

Remus smiles, watching his coffee a he swills it around the cup for a moment. He isn’t sure why he’s so amused. It’s not a joke, Sirius’ self-degradation. Ever since he escaped from Azkaban, it’s been apparent to Remus how much Sirius blames himself for James and Lily’s deaths. Even 11 years in the care of dementors didn’t seem like punishment enough. Remus knows he’s not able to convince Sirius otherwise. Not yet, not right away. Maybe not ever. But it’s just like he knows he will always consider himself worthless, just a little, because of the wolf. It’s self hatred he’s come to accept over the years. 

He looks up at Sirius who is frowning at him in confusion. 

“After you went to jail,” Remus says. “I left England. And I didn’t set foot back here until Dumbledore wrangled me into teaching.” This isn’t news to Sirius. He told Sirius that in the drawn out, fumbling conversations they had while Sirius had stayed with him during Harry’s fourth year before he got kicked out of yet another flat. “Somewhere in those 11 years abroad I managed to convince myself that you were the spy, that you had betrayed James and Lily. But it took a fucking long time. And even when I did train myself believe such things it was half out of the conviction that I was crazy to have any hope that you were not a murderer and a traitor.”

Remus pauses, running thumb over the rim of his coffee cup. “I hated myself for giving in and believing you could do such a thing to James, Lily and Harry. I hated myself for believing that you could do such a thing to me.” Remus laughs, putting his hands to his face. “I couldn’t give up on you, even when I thought the only way to keep living was to stop believing you were the man I fell in love with.”

When Remus takes his hands away from his face, Sirius stares at him, pale and a bit sickly.

“You were miserable and vicious back then, you know,” Remus says, smiling again. “Merlin, Mad Eye used to get under your skin so bad. You punched a hole in the wall once when he’d yelled “Constant vigilance!” at you just one too many times. And you were just as sullen. James didn’t tell you about Lily getting pregnant for two whole weeks after he found out and you moped around the flat for days, smoking for hours and glaring at the wall when you found out. Do you remember when Gwen turned you down in 5th year?” Remus laughs. “You were so distraught about it that James and I had to drag you out of the lake in the middle of the night because you got so drunk you thought you could talk to the giant squid. And then you got mighty sick because it was February and it was a wonder you didn’t freeze to death.”

“And I was so embarrassed about it,” Sirius says in small voice, but he is smiling just a little. “That I didn’t get out of bed for days.”

“Not until I shoved my cold feet under your covers one night, because it was freezing in the dorms and then you were out of there like a lighting bolt. God, James tried to explain it to me and I still didn’t get it until the start of the following year when I had a completely filthy dream about you. Which I was still recovering from when you tore open the curtains and sprawled on top of me. I got it pretty good after that.”

“You never said that dream was about me!” Sirius says in mock outrage. “You had a filthy dream about me in 6th year and you never said?!”

Remus laughs. “Forgive me for not quite yet having come to grips with a fact that would influence everything I did for the rest of my life. I was 16. I wasn’t prepared for that kind of commitment.”

Sirius is smiling now, almost grinning from ear to ear. It starts to fall from him though, and Remus reaches out across the table to touch his hand. He taps the back of Sirius’ hand with his index finger.

“My point is that I made up my mind a long time ago, Sirius. You make me happy. You always have. And I’m not about to give up on that after everything.”

Sirius is quiet, but no longer looks distraught, just contemplative. 

“Do you think everyone knows?” Sirius says, at last. “About us?”

Remus snorts. “Oh god, probably. I’m surprised Molly hasn’t warned us about being too gay in front of the kids yet.” 

Sirius gets this grin on his face that is all too familiar to Remus from their days at school. This is going to go no where good, he knows. 

“I wonder if Tonks knows. Or if she’s still living in ignorant bliss.”

Remus groans. “I am not interested in your cousin, Padfoot.” 

“I don’t know,” Sirius says, getting up to put his mug in the sink. “I think you should go for it.” He wiggles his eyebrows at Remus, before sighing lightly. “You’d have a better life with her than with me. You can’t even leave the house with me, let alone marry me.” Sirius shrugs casually, but he looks dejected. 

Remus shakes his head. “My life with you has always been good. It was being without you that things went bad, Sirius.” 

Sirius says nothing but seems to take enough comfort from that that he smiles. 

“Besides, who cares about leaving the house. There are plenty of things we can do without leaving the house.”

That earns him a laugh out of Sirius. “We’re so old, Remus, and you’re still thinking of jumping bones? How indecent of you. Besides, that’s all I am now, look at me.”

“And I have more grey hairs than my dad did when he died. Who else is going to want us but each other.” Remus grins at Sirius and Sirius grins right back. 

And it’s this, the way it can still feel like they are just kids at school planning another prank, this is the reason Remus never could give up on Sirius. It’s this and so many other things. 

Sirius pulls Remus up out of his chair and collapses into him, nose tucked into Remus’s neck and arms around his waist. Remus holds him, scratching at Sirius’ scalp through his hair. It doesn’t matter if they get through this war, he thinks. He is worn out and weary and feels far older than he should. And so much in his life has gone terribly wrong. But he has the best thing that ever came of it is here in his arms. 

Remus doesn’t intend to let go. 

 

V.

 

It’s an eerie light that emits from the archway where Sirius fell. Remus is all alone in the room, locked away somewhere in the maze that is the Department of Mysteries. 

He pulled a lot of strings to get here. Most of the them were Nymphadora’s. Even after breaking her heart by telling her the truth about Sirius and him. But he pleaded to her sense of loss, and she told him where to be and when and all the doors he came to were unlocked for him. 

It was wrong of him, to use her like that. Sirius’ death left a streak of cruelty in him. It agitated the a snapping, vicious part of him that he knows has little to do with the wolf. A part of him he suspects would have reared its ugly head more often had it not been for his friends. It’s part of why he wanted to come down here. Because he is already tired of this side of himself. 

The light filters across the ground in front of him, and across his face. He closes his eyes to it. 

He doesn’t have to try to hear Sirius whisper to him through the veil. He knew as soon as he thought to try to get down here what he would be putting himself through. But Sirius started calling to him long before he stepped foot into the Department.

He should stay for Harry, of course. He should stay for James and Lily, too. He should look after their son. 

_I’m sorry,_ he wants to say, but he opens his mouth and it’s just a strangled sob that emerges. _I’m sorry. James. Lily. Harry. Forgive me. Forgive me for choosing Sirius over you._

It’s something he’s done nearly all his life. He doesn’t even care to stop himself now. Sirius has always made him happy. Maybe at some point he could have learned to be happy without him, but it’s too late now, Remus thinks. He is too tangled in him now to even want to try. 

An sourceless breeze catches the thin veil in the archway and it rustles out toward him. He hears Sirius laughing from the other side. 

He’s about to leave his wand behind, so they know what has happened to him, but picks it up again. He can already hear Sirius reaming him out for having left it. What kind of Marauder leaves behind his wand when he’s just about to step into the unknown. 

He wonders if Sirius will reprimand him for this, for doing this selfish thing. 

He steps toward the archway, feeling ghost-like fingers caressing his cheek, and somehow he thinks Sirius will forgive him. 

 

 


End file.
